I wrote an article the other day on terrorism (Education, Education, Education). And afterwards I had a thought about the effect that my article might have on terrorism. Or rather not just my article but articles in general.

Terrorism is, I think, the idea of "all publicity is good publicity" taken to it's furthest conclusion.

And so. What is the news report about terrorism? How does that fit in? Is it information for the free? Or propaganda for the terrorist? It's an odd balance. And how could the press do other than act as the terrorist mouthpiece? If nobody reported the story it would probably create more terror as people felt the government was exerting undue control. Or the alternative that is frankly more likely that every newspaper thinks that they can be "the one" who does the big splash so breaks it.

So what do we do? Write about it or not? The only reason these events are so successful is because of the news stories they create. In fact the events of 11th September 2001 cause a fundamental shift in US interest in that the bombing in Spain carried mass coverage in the US whereas that would have certainly been a specialist story previously.

By simply making people aware of terrorism don't the terrorists win? Doesn't the issue start to get considered politically? Despite not bargaining with terrorists it would seem that being a terrorist gets your issue "front and centre".

So what should we do?

Perhaps the best thing is to make the reporting of such news as disgusting. A despicable act that some fringe newspapers will tolerate but is generally frowned upon. I know that this sounds like an uncomfortable invasion on freedom of speech but it isn't really. Actually it is much more an ability to keep our freedom but have something like a consensus view on what to do.

Freedom of speech is valid but we don't have to give them a megaphone.